Are we creating another Tower of Babel?

I found a course “Information Society: Policies and Politics” that should help me consider the future of digital media. As I told the class during introductions, my hope is that newspapers make smart online choices so that they can hold onto their important role as the Fourth Estate in our democracy.

The course, offered in the Kennedy School of Government, is taught by Nolan Bowie (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/nolan_bowie). He brings a Zenlike approach to teaching, encouraging his students to think about and discuss the future.

The students in the class are amazing. Almost all are midcareer professionals. Among them are a lawyer and communications regulator from Israel; a journalism professor on sabbatical from Nigeria who used to regulate advertising in Kenya; one of the founders of a wireless network in Philadelphia; a National Security Fellow who is a lieutenant colonel in the Army; an MIT grad student and software engineer; a Japanese official in the ministry of communications; a Minnesota who supervises a public defenders’ office; a South Korean reporter; a Romanian telecom investor and venture capitalist; a Rwandan public policy planner and spiritual leader; a Colombian industrial engineer who wants to start an independent journal on media.

Whew. What a group. Also in the class is fellow Nieman Fellow, Guillermo Franco, editor of eltiempo.com in Colombia. He and I found each other via e-mail even before arriving in Cambridge because we share similar interest in media’s online future.

Friedman suggests the United States already is losing its top spot in the Information Age. We face a challenge like when the Soviets put Sputnik into orbit in 1957, but we’re too self-satisfied and distracted to realize it.

Professor Bowie and my classmates surely will expand my world view of this subject. He also already has asked some questions dear to me: What happens when there is no mass media because the market has fragmented so much? What happens then to the glue that holds society together? Are we educated enough to make rational decisions not only for ourselves but the society as a whole?

In relation to blogging, Professor Bowie touched on the phenomenon of all of us being our own publishers. Is that an improvement? If we are all speaking at the same time, then who is listening? Is it another Tower of Babel?

The mainstream media do tell us what to think, but they do tell us what to think about. If we have no shared conversation as a society, what will we accomplish?

A lot of questions. Perhaps you’ll help me find some answers along the way.